Growing Up in Ireland tracks the development of two nationally representative cohorts of children and young people: an Infant and a Child Cohort. This report focuses on the Child Cohort, an older group of just over 8,500 children, their families, teachers and school principals. They were first interviewed between September 2007 and March 2008, when the children were nine years of age. The young people and their families were re-interviewed at 13 years of age, between August 2011 and February 2012.

This report deals exclusively with families who remained in this cohort at age 13. This represents a final group of just over 7,400 children and their caregivers. Developmental outcomes in three broad areas of the 13-year-old’s life are considered: The descriptive account here examines how children’s outcomes and well-being varied according to a range of salient characteristics in their lives, including gender, family type, income, social class and parental education. The outcomes for children are set in the context of the circumstances of the families and how these changed with the onset of the Great Recession.